Advanced Quality Cost Analysis and Productivity Optimisation Training Course

Course overview

Quality failures consume budget long before they appear as scrap, warranty claims or missed delivery dates. Rework hours, inspection queues, expedited freight, supplier defects, excess inventory and lost production capacity are often recorded across separate cost centres, making the true cost of poor quality difficult to see and harder to challenge. This course equips experienced quality and operations professionals to build a defensible cost-of-quality view, identify the productivity losses behind it and prioritise improvement work by financial impact rather than intuition.

Participants apply prevention-appraisal-failure (PAF) models, cost of poor quality (COPQ) calculations, activity-based costing and process-loss analysis to operational data. They learn to validate data sources, distinguish accounting cost from operational loss, quantify yield, cycle-time and equipment-effectiveness losses, and use Pareto analysis, statistical process control and regression to isolate major cost drivers. The course also covers benefit forecasting, investment appraisal and executive-ready reporting for improvement projects.

Instruction combines expert-led analysis with realistic manufacturing and service-operation cases. Working in teams, participants build a quality-cost model in Excel, analyse defect and productivity data in Minitab, and create a concise Power BI management dashboard. Each participant leaves with a completed Quality Cost and Productivity Optimisation Action Plan: a defined baseline, loss-tree, prioritised improvement portfolio, financial assumptions, measurement plan and stakeholder reporting structure ready for adaptation in their own operation.

The programme is designed for intermediate-level practitioners who already work with operational performance data and need more rigorous financial and analytical methods. It is particularly valuable where leaders require quality teams to show how defect reduction, process capability and productivity initiatives translate into measurable margin, capacity and customer-service gains.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Construct a prevention-appraisal-failure cost-of-quality model that separates visible costs from hidden operational losses
• Calculate cost of poor quality using scrap, rework, warranty, complaint, downtime and opportunity-cost data
• Map a process loss tree linking defects, yield loss, cycle-time variation and capacity constraints to financial impact
• Apply activity-based costing to assign inspection, rework and failure costs to products, processes and customers
• Use Pareto charts, control charts and capability indices to identify the quality losses with the strongest improvement case
• Quantify productivity effects through OEE, first-pass yield, labour efficiency and throughput-loss calculations
• Evaluate improvement proposals using benefit forecasts, payback period, net present value and sensitivity analysis
• Produce a management-ready quality-cost dashboard and 90-day productivity optimisation action plan

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Quality Managers — who must justify prevention and improvement investment with credible financial evidence
• Operational Excellence Managers — who prioritise Lean, Six Sigma and productivity initiatives across competing loss areas
• Production Managers — who need to convert defect, downtime and yield data into capacity and cost decisions
• Continuous Improvement Specialists — who lead root-cause and waste-reduction projects requiring quantified benefits
• Process Engineers — who need to connect process capability, variation and equipment performance to cost of poor quality
• Financial Analysts supporting Operations — who validate quality-loss assumptions and improvement business cases

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience in quality, production, process improvement or operational performance management. They should already understand basic process mapping, defect rates, yield, Pareto analysis and spreadsheet formulas, and be comfortable interpreting operational KPIs such as cycle time, downtime and labour hours. Familiarity with Lean or Six Sigma terminology is useful but not essential. Participants will work with Microsoft Excel and sample Minitab and Power BI outputs; advanced programming, formal accounting qualifications, prior Minitab certification and prior Power BI dashboard-building experience are not required.

Training methodology

The five-day programme alternates short instructor-led technical sessions with guided analysis of a multi-stage operational case. Participants work from raw defect, labour, downtime, inspection and customer-claim data to build cost models in Excel, test variation patterns in Minitab and present decision views in Power BI. Facilitated group reviews challenge assumptions about cost allocation, benefit leakage and savings validation. Daily workshops build toward an individual application plan, using each participant’s own process context, available data sources and improvement priorities.

Course outline

Day 1: Cost of Quality Architecture and Data Foundations

• Prevention-appraisal-failure model design
• Cost of poor quality taxonomy
• Visible versus hidden failure costs
• Direct, indirect and opportunity-cost treatment
• Quality-cost data-source mapping
• Operational and financial data reconciliation
• Baseline definition and measurement governance

Workshop: Participants create a quality-cost data map and first-pass PAF model for a case operation, identifying missing data and ownership for each cost category.

Day 2: Quantifying Process Loss and Productivity Impact

• First-pass yield and rolled-throughput yield
• Scrap, rework and concession costing
• Overall equipment effectiveness loss decomposition
• Labour-efficiency and utilisation variance analysis
• Cycle-time, queue-time and throughput loss
• Process loss-tree construction
• Capacity release and opportunity-cost calculations

Workshop: Participants build a loss tree that converts yield, downtime and rework data into monthly cost and recoverable-capacity estimates.

Day 3: Analytical Diagnosis of Cost Drivers

• Pareto analysis by defect, product and process
• Activity-based costing for quality activities
• Statistical process control interpretation
• Process capability indices Cp and Cpk
• Stratification and multi-vari analysis
• Regression analysis of quality-cost drivers
• Root-cause evidence and validation logic

Workshop: Using Minitab outputs and case data, participants identify the dominant defect-cost drivers and prepare an evidence-based problem statement.

Day 4: Optimisation Economics and Improvement Portfolio Design

• Prevention versus failure-cost trade-offs
• Improvement-option benefit modelling
• Payback-period and net-present-value analysis
• Sensitivity analysis for uncertain benefits
• Savings leakage and benefit-realisation risks
• Project prioritisation matrices
• Control-plan measures for sustained gains

Workshop: Participants evaluate three competing improvement proposals and produce a ranked investment portfolio with financial assumptions and risk notes.

Day 5: Reporting, Governance and Application Planning

• Power BI quality-cost dashboard structure
• Leading and lagging quality indicators
• Waterfall charts for savings communication
• Finance validation and savings sign-off
• Monthly quality-cost review cadence
• Stakeholder-specific reporting narratives
• Ninety-day implementation roadmap design

Workshop: Participants present a management dashboard and complete a 90-day Quality Cost and Productivity Optimisation Action Plan for their workplace.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Minitab Statistical Software, Microsoft Power BI, ISO 9001:2015

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions